Road House and all the images you see in this review are owned by Amazon MGM Studios
Directed by Doug Liman
There are a lot of movies that I still need to catch up on, but I never thought the original Road House was necessarily one of them. It had the vibe of something that was a clear product of its time, and with so many amazing action movies since then, I was pretty confident that I hadn’t missed out on much. Perhaps that makes me the target audience for this remake, which certainly looked impressive from the trailers, and I’m always happy to see follow Jake Gyllenhaal to whatever wacky project he signs onto. Is this the update to an eighties classic that both fans and newcomers can love, or will this be another soulless cash grab for those nostalgic bucks? Heck, we already got a crappy Point Blank remake, so why not a lousy Road House one too? Let’s find out!!
In the Florida Keys, there is a bar that is being besieged by drunks and punks who like to get belligerent and tear up the place. If the owner (Jessica Williams) wants to keep the bar from collapsing, both financially and literally, she’s gonna need someone to deescalate situations and put a hurt on anybody who takes things too far. What better person for that role than a down on his luck UFC fighter named Dalton (Jake Gyllenhaal) who’s good at breaking arms but can’t mend the pain in his soul! Still, a few weeks on sunny beaches drinking coffee and tossing out drunks couldn’t hurt, right? Well, it turns out that there are more than just a few boozehounds trying to take down the bar, and what should have been a period of self-care for the man turns into the greatest challenge of his life. Can Dalton keep the peace in this small town despite being an outsider? Who is behind these vicious attacks on the bar, and what’s waiting in the wings if they can’t get the job done? Imagine being this cool while ALSO having starred in Bubble Boy!
I don’t think of myself as a complicated man to please. Give me something that’s fun, energetic, and with a dash of stylish panache, and you’ve got me hook, line and sinker! This update to the Swayze original is everything you’d want from a proper reimagining; namely that it reimagines the ideas and grows them organically to fit with modern cinema. The original is fun to be sure, and I would argue that it still does a few things better than this one, but I haven’t had this much fun with a movie in a long time, and it manages to feel retro in all the right ways that keeps it from feeling dated. It’s laid back and loose like a lot of movies from that era, but the crisp cinematography and sharp writing help it to stand out among some of the best action comedies we’ve gotten in years. Gyllenhaal has always been one of our best unorthodox actors, so it’s not a surprise that he knocks it out of the park here, but he adeptly handles the nuances of a character who is both very simple to understand and deeply complex in his motives. The movie takes its time to give us the full picture, which is great for keeping us invested in the story, but it doesn’t take anything more than Gyllenhaal’s mischievous grin and weary resignation to feel how heavily his past weighs on him. Still, you don’t sit down for a Road House movie just for the charming characters; you want to know if the action kicks butt and takes names! I’m glad to report that this movie shines just as brightly with its action scenes as it does with its characters, and there’s a unique look to them due to the four layer compositing to make the hits feel as close to real as possible. It’s somehow both more artificial than say a John Wick movie, and yet somehow more grounded as what they choose to enhance with special effects is focused and gritty rather than big and spectacular. It’s a unique choice that goes along with the rest of the movie’s strong stylistic sensibilities, and while there are a few awkward moments here and there, the ambition is greatly appreciated. If anything feels a bit wanting, I’d say the rowdiness of the bar feels a little forced at times which was certainly not the case in the original, and this suffers a bit from its version of Dalton not being an experienced bouncer as his mentorship of the younger guys feels similarly forced, but with so much else on its mind I’m willing to hand these minor concessions over to the Swayze film.
What I can’t shrug off, however, is the third act, which is where some of the film’s bugbears rise up and take center stage. For such a breezy movie, things get far too convoluted at the end, and the film doesn’t have a great explanation for any of it. On a character level, it has solid payoffs to what they have spent the movie building up, but the mechanics of the plot start to grind together as the exposition starts to overwhelm the sense of flow. It’s a shame because I liked what the film was building to with Billy Magnussen once again playing a charmingly incompetent villain, and I would have been fine with a more laid back conclusion. Instead, it feels like the movie pushed the snooze alarm too many times and had to fit all its plot in the last thirty minutes; rushing through some very important moments in the hopes of fitting it all in before the credits start to roll. I also can’t end this review without mentioning Conor McGregor as the big bad henchman of the movie. In a vacuum, I think he’s a fun character who is the perfect counterpart to Dalton’s more reserved demeanor, and the dude has a surprisingly shameless acting style that would make him a shoe in for similarly brazen features like Fast and the Furious or even a Mission Impossible movie. That being said, I simply couldn’t invest myself in his character because… well it’s Conor McGregor; notorious asshole, and alleged sexual predator. Within the context of the movie, I didn’t catch any winks or nods to his real life self aside from the fact that he’s a fighter, so if you know nothing about this guy then you wouldn’t even think to have any mixed feelings about seeing him on screen, but he’s also enthusiastically presented by the movie as a scene stealing, scenery chewing, cartoon character, and it’s awkward to watch this specific man soak up so much time in this otherwise simple movie. It’s a knock against the film, and my score will reflect it. Perhaps you can separate the art from the artist, and I’m sure you can find some hypocrisy in a previous review that renders this point moot for you, but it’s not something I wanted to leave hanging over this without calling attention to it.
Without question, this is the best movie I’ve seen so far this year, and it’s all the more frustrating that the flaws are as obvious as they are. It wouldn’t have taken a lot to fix them, but it gets so much right that it’s hardly worth complaining about what could have been instead of appreciating what we actually have. If you aren’t bothered by McGregor’s presence and can groove on its laid back tone, then this is an easy recommendation from me, despite a messy third act. Not every movie from the past is a classic, and I’d argue that the original Road House is on the lower tier of great eighties movies, but that made it all the more deserving of a remake like this; one that’s driven by a desire to update and even improve upon its subject-matter rather than demurely try to imitate it. A road House movie without balls is how we got Road House 2! Did you want another Road House 2? I didn’t think so!
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